It’s times like this when the ruling government is up to their earlobes in the shit, and word on the street is a snap election is looming, that I realize that Homer Simpson was right: democracy doesn’t work.
What’s the use of having a choice when your choice is:
- A slightly right-of-centre Liberal party (or slightly left, depending on who is leading at the time) mired in scandal and filled with MPs of questionable intelligence
- A left-wing NDP party whose heart is in the right place, but whose naivete on the realities of the world is a bit unsettling
- A right-wing Conservative party who was once a party more known for its intolerance, redneck policies, and myopia, then turned into a party a only slightly less asshatted, and now is just a bunch of jerks.
Sigh. The older I get, the less engaged I feel with the political process. I just don’t see the sense in system where there is only one choice if you’re liberal, one choice if you’re more conservative, and so on. If the sole party that has policies close to what you believe in is seen as crooked or filled with incompetents (as is the case right now), what’s the alternative?
Of course, there’s worst democratic systems out there, and we’re lucky to have the right to vote in the first place, but what’s the use if there’s no one worth voting for?
Just so this isn’t all ranting, what would be first thing I would do to fix the system? Get rid of all television cameras from the House of Commons, so that MPs would actually get back to debating and discussing matters of importance. If I see another MP grandstanding for the camera during question period, I do believe I will vomit.
